Some apps not starting

[Nick]

I am running Win XP and recently picked up a problem where some of the
applications (Firefox, IE, Winamp etc) do not start up although others
do. The apps that do not start load up in memory and show up in task
manager but do not appear on the desktop.

The desktop itself sometimes flicks.

Has the explorer.exe (desktop) been hijacked?

 

[Volodymyr Shcherbyna]

No, all what explorer.exe does is just calling ShellExecute API function
when you run something. If some application has started, and is seen in Task
Manager, then for sure, it was started, but something goes wrong with
application itself.

Taking into account, that FireFox was started, but was not showing, I can
suppose, that there is some buggy firewall, or LSP (winsock layerd service
provider) which intercept network traffic, and makes a deadlock, so when
application tries to access network, it stucks.

Another possible idea is ... Antiviruses. Some of AV hooks Windows API
functions, and sometimes it causes unpredictable behavior of system. Did you
installed recently something from FW or AV software?

Of course, your problem might be caused by a virus, which patched the
executable file, so it does not work properly.

--
Volodymyr
"Nick" <area5pr@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a27ce344-11e1-4c8a-a2d8-47d786456a79@i72g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>I am running Win XP and recently picked up a problem where some of the
> applications (Firefox, IE, Winamp etc) do not start up although others
> do. The apps that do not start load up in memory and show up in task
> manager but do not appear on the desktop.
>
> The desktop itself sometimes flicks.
>
> Has the explorer.exe (desktop) been hijacked?